


a confluence of diminutive concepts

by EtherealPrince



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: A lot of alternate universes, Activism, Alcoholism, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Arguing, Bottom Erik Lehnsherr, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Jewish Character, Clubbing, Drug Use, Ficlet Collection, First Meetings, Flirting, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Married Life, Mpreg, Robots, Secret Relationship, Sexual Tension, breakups and makeups, tags will be updated with every chapter!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-28 03:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30133368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherealPrince/pseuds/EtherealPrince
Summary: i've decided i like writing ficlets so i'm creating a place to put them all! cherik just makes me want to write and i like them a lot :]
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	1. beginnings

It’s not always Charles, staring at Erik’s back as an FBI agent dries him off on a boat off the coast of Florida. That’s not always how it starts.

Sometimes it’s in Haifa, in a military hospital, and Erik looks too damnably handsome in his ward uniform. It’s the 1960s, most of the time, and the X-Gene is not yet named.

But sometimes, it’s 2010, and there is no X-Gene at all. Sometimes there is. Charles and Erik play chess over iPhone apps and text each other too much.

Sometimes it’s further than that. Humanity could be in space and the concept of either Erik or Charles could be a created personality inhabiting the body of a machine. That being the case doesn’t stop them from learning love.

And sometimes it’s further back. Prohibition, maybe, or the trenches in Normandy. Maybe it’s New York at the turn of the century and Erik and Charles share a kiss in private when the hour ticks from 1899 to 1900. 

Sometimes they meet in peace, and sometimes in war. Sometimes it’s already too late and sometimes it’s far too early.

Sometimes they’re childhood friends. Edie takes a liking to the little Xavier boy and lets him stay over as much as he likes (Erik coerces him into staying up past their bedtime).

If it’s not that, then they’re high school friends in the gender-sexuality-alliance club. Or they’re college students, staying up late in their dorm to paint signs they’re bringing to the campus protest planned for the next day. Either way, they compete against each other in grades constantly, and no one knows why they keep at it.

But sometimes they’re not friends at all.

Sometimes Magneto is the terror of mutantkind and Professor X isn’t able to stop him from slaughtering humans in his quest for worldwide domination. Sometimes Erik forgets he whom he used to be, but Charles remembers, and he regrets.

Sometimes they’re destined to hate each other. Charles is rich while Erik is poor - Charles is a good anglo-saxon christian boy and Erik is an angry jewish kid from down the block - Charles is the prim and proper heir to a great and civilized kingdom while Erik is a battle scarred warrior-king. Sometimes it’s not fair.

Rarely, it’s something extraordinary. There’s scales and gills, or maybe there’s fangs and claws, or there’s pointed ears and gossamer wings. There’s peace, and there’s war, and there’s death, famine, pestilence, conquest.

Chaos. Most of the time, there’s chaos.

Sometimes Charles fails.

Sometimes Erik fails.

It’s hard to get everything _just_ right, if the sheer number of universes out there says anything about luck and random chances, but sometimes they make it. It’s one out of a million, billion, trillion, but they make it.

Sometimes Erik gets tackled by his kids when he walks through his front door at the end of the day, and Charles laughs at him from the kitchen. Sometimes they cheer too loudly for their daughter at her soccer game. Sometimes Charles gets a job at a prestigious university and Erik gets a pay raise that erases any concerns about rent for the month.

Rarely, so very, very rarely, Charles and Erik meet and they stay. They’re both flighty things, prone to wanderlust and curiosity and an allergy to commitment, but they find a way to stick together. They stay. 

Sometimes they bind it with a ring, with a hushed prayer in a dark room, under a blanket, with tears in their eyes, with blood on their hands, while trying to hold onto each other whilst something else tries to tear them apart.

If you gave a primate a typewriter, Charles might say, and it hit keys at random for the rest of eternity, it could very possibly write the complete and collected works of Shakespeare. But the probability of that is next to none.

There’s still a chance, though.

In every universe there’s a chance.

Even if the typewriter’s a chisel and stone, ink and quill on parchment, code in a telegraph, keys on a phone or computer. There’s always a chance.

Whether they stay, or they break apart, or they drift, or they abandon each other, hate each other, miss each other, hurt each other, they always manage to _find_ each other.

And it’s like the primate typing out that first R in the title of _Romeo and Juliet,_ Charles might also say. It’s a start, balancing on the edge of something incredible.

Erik might say he’s over exaggerating things. Charles might laugh and try to convince him that he’s technically not _wrong,_ so in some way he must be right. Right?

It’s an infinitesimally small probability that anyone’s ever born at all. It’s an even smaller chance that two people, who are Bookends of the Same Soul and all that, meet and fall in love.

And yet it always seems to happen. Every single time. Without fail.

And sometimes, while Charles watches Erik in his wetsuit get dried off and watches him snap at the government agents trying to ask him questions, he thinks back to that typewriter. And Erik turns and meets his eyes, still disbelieving of the voice in his head.

_Yes,_ Charles thinks to himself. _This is it. This is the chance._


	2. accusation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canonverse, days of future past-era.

Halfway through their chess game on the plane, Charles can’t keep quiet anymore.

“You know,” He drawls, and moves his rook to capture Erik’s knight. “After you left, Sean Cassidy enlisted in the military.”

To Erik, this is news. “For Vietnam?”

Charles nods and leans his head on a fist. “Yeah. He wasn’t even drafted, like most of them were. He just wanted to go.”

Erik hates to think of how Sean could possibly be convinced to such a thing, but he asks anyway. “Why?”

Charles looks up from the chessboard and glares at him. He picks up his whiskey glass and takes a drink.

“Charles, why did he go?” Erik insists, leaning forward in his seat.

“He wanted to look for you.”

A beat passes.

Charles clears his throat and looks pointedly at Erik’s side of the board. “It’s your move.”

Erik shakes his head. “No, we’re not going past this. He was looking for me?” Something about young, cautious, awkward Sean voluntarily enlisting in war just for the chance that he might see his mentor again makes something inside him...hurt.

Charles pinches the bridge of his nose and drinks again, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he places the glass back down on the table. He keeps his hand around it. “He thought,” he starts. “That if he joined the army, he’d get to travel the world. And that maybe he’d find you again. I told him it was foolish but…” A shrug. “He didn’t listen.”

Erik knew Sean was dead. He hadn’t known why, or how, but he knew he was dead. Sometimes it was worse to know why.

He slumps back in his seat. The chess pieces stand unmoved on the board, and for some reason he can’t find the motivation to keep playing.

Sean had always been one of his favorites. Of all the recruits they had found, Sean had been the most...normal. He was in his first year of college and lived with his mother. He liked the Beatles and smoked weed when he was stressed out. He was gangly, and odd, in a way that reminded Erik strangely of himself when he was his age. Maybe, if everything that had happened to him hadn’t happened, he would have turned out like Sean. Normal.

The day he learned to fly, the boy had come up to him after they got down off the satellite and called Erik an asshole for pushing him. He was grinning, though, breathless and red in the face. He told Erik he was going to go back up and do it again tomorrow.

He wonders if they shaved off his curly mess of orange hair when he enlisted. He wondered if Sean’s mother was able to receive his body or if it was never found.

“I don’t need my powers to know you’re thinking about him.” Charles sighs, draining his glass and reaching for the bottle again. Erik blinks and narrows his eyes at Charles’ hand around the bottle’s neck.

“You shouldn’t be drunk when we land.”

Charles raises a disdainful eyebrow at him. “On the contrary, my friend, I really think I should be. It’s what’s made the last eleven years bearable.”

“I wasn’t anywhere Sean would be able to find me.” He says quietly, and Charles pauses for a moment, breathing in and out to steady himself, before pouring. 

“I figured. You don’t like being found.”

Erik hesitates and then moves his queen. “I’m sorry, Charles.”

From the momentary wide-eyed look of exasperation Charles directs into his glass, Erik knows apologizing again won’t do anything. “Don’t say sorry to me, Erik, say sorry to the boy who got shipped home in a wooden box.”

So he _was_ found.

“I’ll visit his mother.” He decides, eyes fixed on the chessboard. 

Charles stares at him, but says nothing. Erik can almost feel the disbelief pouring off of him in waves like _he_ was the telepath. “I will. After we’re done here and this is all over, I’ll visit her.”

“She knows who you are, now. What you’ve done. You, in a roundabout way, sent him to his death.”

Erik takes a steady breath in. “I know.”

“I don’t think Ms. Cassidy will be very welcoming to you.”

“I know.”

Charles shakes his head. “It’s your own funeral.” He grumbles into his glass. He moves his bishop to the middle of the board and takes his fingers off of it before he’s ready.

Erik captures it with his king. “It’s a small price to pay for what happened to him.”

Charles fumes, and thinks _The right price to pay for what you’ve done is for you to stay. Please, God, Erik. Stay. Just stay._

But Erik can’t hear him.


	3. restless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern au, omegaverse. alpha charles and omega erik. we all knew this was inevitable for me!

When Charles rolls over in bed to drape himself over Erik, he lands on an empty space in the mattress instead.

“Erik?” He mumbles, mouth in his pillow. There’s no answer, but as he groggily extends his mind out to the rest of the house he finds his husband in the nursery.

He sighs. Of course.

With one hand he reaches out and yanks his wheelchair closer to the side of the bed so he can slide into it, tired muscles protesting the strain when they wanted to be asleep, and once he’s sitting upright he slowly wheels himself out of their bedroom and down the hall to where Erik’s mind was.

Just as expected, Charles finds him standing silhouetted in the light of the moon shining through the nursery window. He’s got a hand on the rim of the yet-empty crib and his mind is deliberately calm. Charles listens in a little bit more and finds that Erik’s counting his breaths, trying to calm himself down from something.

“Are you alright?” He asks him, raising a hand to rub at his eye.

Erik turns like he hadn’t noticed Charles was there, like he was disrupted out of a dream. “Did I wake you?”

“No.” Charles shakes his head. “Just wondering what got you up.”

Erik drops his hand to his belly. This hadn’t been an easy pregnancy so far for him, and from that movement alone Charles could tell what bothered him. “My back,” he says quietly. “It’s just - killing me.”

Charles wheels further into the room so he could place his hand at the small of his lover’s spine. The skin felt very warm. “Down here?”

Erik exhales a breath in a sigh. “Yeah. It’s been like that all night, I don’t know why.”

Recalling what medical knowledge of omega pregnancies he knew, Charles tilted his head to the side in thought. “It might just be your spine getting used to the weight of the baby. It’ll stop soon.”

“Will it really?” Erik looks disbelieving when he turns his eyes down to Charles. His thoughts turned back towards sleep: _I just want to get an entire eight hours without waking up at 4 a.m._

“Yes, my love.” Charles reassures him. An alpha’s comforts had differing levels of reassurance when it came to the subject of having children, but at least he had actually done his research. “This isn’t chronic pain, it’s muscle strain. Like...weightlifting, I think would be a good metaphor. A very different type of weightlifting.”

Erik snorts. “It’s some kind of it, that’s for sure. And I have a quarter of a year left to go of this?”

Charles pats his back (gently). “It’ll all be worth it in retrospect. And even better - your hormones will ensure you forget all the pain and suffering.”

Leave it to him to address the scientific side of things, even in a situation like this. Charles’ heart softens at the smile that pulls Erik’s lips up. “Are you sure you’re not going to try and upstage the doctors when I have the baby?”

His snarky sense of humor making a return is a sign that his mood is improving. Charles humors him - “Oh, whether that happens or not remains to be seen. I bet I can speedrun a gynecologist’s degree in three months.”

Erik leans over to kiss the crown of his head, holding his hand firmly at the base of his belly. “You would. Back to bed?”

“You feeling better?”

His omega nods. “Now I am.”

“I’ll massage your back, if you want.”

Charles’ wheelchair, at that, turns toward the door without his interference and rolls out of the nursery, with Erik following behind. He laughs - “I take it that’s a yes?”

“It’s a yes _please.”_

They end up falling asleep around five, but they sleep in until noon. Charles wakes up with Erik wrapped around him like a gangly octopus, despite his bump, and presses his face into the crook of his neck before closing his eyes again.

The midday sun shone through partly-closed curtains and for right now, everything was at peace.


	4. snowflake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> edwardian au. (forgive my minimal german.)

Between the two of them, Erik was the early riser.

He was shaped by a hard working life of labor, used to getting up with the sun and the first crowing of the birds in early morning light. Until he married the young Lord Xavier in secret, to obtain financial security for himself and his two children, he had never gone a day in his life without working.

Now that he had so much more free time, he didn’t know what to do with himself when he woke up hours before Charles or the twins would. Sometimes he’d light a candle in the Xavier manor’s library to sit and read by, or he’d dress early and take a walk around the gardens, or he’d take one of the horses out of the stables to ride a circuit through the forest ringing the back of the property.

It was winter now, however, and outside his and Charles’ bedroom window a thick blanket of snow covered the frozen ground outside. The birds were not singing yet, but the stun still shone and made the icicles hanging off the roof sparkle.

This was the first snow of the season. The first snow Erik had actually spent indoors instead of outside, working his muscles sore. The privilege of being able to stay warm inside was not one he would take advantage of, now, but he knew the air outside must be so crisp and cool he couldn’t resist going outside.

He looked back to his husband, still fast asleep in bed. Charles looked so damnably peaceful when he slept, like an angel, but Erik was a cruel man. He touched his shoulder gently, bending down to whisper into his ear.

“Wake up, liebling. Charles.”

At first, Erik’s efforts were unsuccessful, as Charles just burrowed further down under the sheets and turned away from him. Erik pulled the blankets away from his face and placed his palm on Charles’ cheek.

Charles jolted - whether it was from the sensation of being touched or from how cold Erik’s hand was, it wasn’t known. Either way, blue eyes groggily opened and glared up at Erik sullenly. “Heaven on earth, Erik, what time is it? How can you be up at this hour?”

He chuckled. “It’s only eight o’clock, darling. You must see the snow outside.”

Raising a hand to rub at his eyes, Charles slowly sat up in bed, sleep clothes rumpled. “It can’t be all that impressive, surely.”

“‘Tis the first snow I’ve spent married to you.” Erik murmured, pressing his lips to the side of Charles’ head. “I’m going to wake the children. You may join us if you like.”

Out the corner of his eye as he turned to leave, Erik saw Charles’ expression soften. He could almost hear him weighing his options - stay in bed where it’s nice and warm, or watch the sun rise and their children play in the snow?

When he’s halfway out the door he hears Charles’ decision: “I’ll be out soon.” He breathes, and Erik smiles.

~

After Erik’s gotten himself and the twins dressed, Wanda in her woolen muff and stockings and Pietro in his oversized coat, he releases them out onto the manor’s front lawn to wreck their havoc. The maids and butlers had been generously waved off when they offered him help with the children (Erik didn’t like having other people take care of his kids, anyway) and were directed up Charles’ way instead - Lord knew that man was useless in the mornings.

He stood out in the snow on the manor’s front steps, watching Wanda chase Pietro with a handful of snow in her mittened palms from under the brim of his hat. With every breath he took, mist curled out of his mouth like dragon’s smoke, and the cold turned his face and the tips of his ungloved fingers red. It was a good kind of cold, energizing and alive. 

It reminded Erik of his father’s farm, where he’d lived as a boy - every winter he’d go and take the cows in after the first snow, and then the donkeys, and then he’d wrangle the chickens back into the henhouse if they were running around in their pen. Many a time, he’d watch the sun rise from inside the barn.

Oh, how things had changed. Erik was happy to see that watching pink and orange bloom across the sky hadn’t lost any of its majesty.

Before long, the manor’s door opened again, and Erik turned around to see Charles walking down the steps to join him. Despite the early hour, he was dressed impeccably and didn’t look tired, which for him was quite the feat. 

Erik held out a hand to him as Charles stepped up to his side, leaning on the cane he used to get around. He looped his arm around his waist and Charles leant his head on Erik’s shoulder, sighing out in a puff of fog.

“Aren’t you freezing? You don’t even have a scarf on.”

“I grew up in the cold, my love, we weren’t all pampered like you.”

Charles scoffs, though it’s good-natured. “I don’t know how you can stand it - or how the children can, for that matter. Look at them, they’ll be soaked once they come back inside!”

Sure enough, both Wanda and Pietro were covered in snow. Wanda shook her head and a blizzard of powder fell from her unruly hair, twinkling like fairy dust. “I don’t think they’ll mind.”

They both fall silent for a minute. Erik listens to Charles’ steady breaths, in and out and in and out, while he holds him. He was right - it was a good idea to come outside.

And it seems Charles, begrudgingly, feels the same way. “You’re lucky I love you enough to get up so early. It _is_ very lovely out.” He admits, planting his cane firmer into the ground, through the snow cover. 

“Of course, Charles. I’m so very lucky.”

Charles lightly whacks him in the side, and they both snicker at each other. This is one of the moments where Erik is truly grateful to have been able to marry Charles Xavier. Giving the man a chance despite his initial paranoia and misgivings might have been the best decision he’d ever made.

He can’t resist poking fun at his lovely, lazy spouse, however: “...Do you love me enough to make this a daily outing?”

Charles groans. “Absolutely not. You’d have to carry me outside.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I might.” Erik ponders, cocking his head to the side in thought. 

Charles rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible.” After a minute though, he huffs, leaning further into Erik’s side. “But if this is what I have to look forward to with you, then I wish for many heavy winters to come.” He says quietly. 

“You have much more than that to look forward to. So sehr, meine liebling. Du kennst mich noch nicht alle.” Erik murmurs, tilting his head down to kiss him. Charles meets him with a smile, and despite the chill to the air, his lips are warm.


	5. haze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two in one day, baby! cyber dystopia au, erik is an android.

The apartment is a mile above the earth’s surface.

Buildings, now, stretch up so far that from the ground you can’t see the top. As humanity kept crowding the earth the only option left to them was to build up, and so they did. Humans lived in stems, crowded like termite mounds.

At least the privileged and wealthy did. If you weren’t that, you crawled along the ground like an ant, on the earth’s surface, which had grown seedy and dangerous and dark. Smog so thickly covered the lowest layers of the atmosphere that you were liable to get suffocated by it if you were down there too long.

The apartment that Charles rented, which was on the 60th floor of his building, just managed to break through the haze and provide him with a dusky yellow view of the sky, and the other skyscrapers that pierced through the low miasma like spears.

He knew that better people deserved to live this high up, not him. He didn’t deserve the luxury he had been handed. An alcoholic, a recovering drug addict, a man with a robotic spine that he wasn’t thankful for. There was nowhere to walk, anyway. He never went to ground level.

At least the company wasn’t abysmal. 

Buying an android had been a long time coming, but Charles had been putting it off until he overdosed in his bathtub and woke up to paramedics slapping him in the face and dousing him with water and injecting him with neutralizing chemicals.

He needed the help. He needed the presence of another to keep himself from spiraling down again. Ever since Raven left for bluer skies with her new husband, he had been alone, and he hated being alone.

The android, thankfully, was not the eerie mannequin he imagined when Charles ordered it online. It - he, really - was more similar to a live-in housemate than a caretaker robot, and for that Charles was grateful.

And he had a name. That was a big plus - Charles didn’t think he’d be able to handle it if his android came with a name like MX-12, or something. His name was Erik, and that was better than anything else Charles could have imagined.

In his apartment, Charles stood, facing out of the floor-to-ceiling window that made up one wall of his sitting room. The run was a red circle in the sky against a golden backdrop. These days, it was hard to tell what time it was when you looked outside because it always looked like sunset.

“Charles?” Comes a voice from outside of the room. He hums in response, and moments later he sees Erik’s reflection approach him in the glass.

“I’m fine.” He reassures the android, without turning around to address him directly. 

Erik’s reflection turns skeptical. “You haven’t taken your medication. I’d suggest doing it before noon for optimal results.”

He sighs. Every time Erik said something like that, something clinical and formal and used a word like ‘optimal’, he was reminded of how painfully not-human he was. It was so easy to get lost in these perfect replicas of human bodies, personalities, minds, that it hurt every time Charles was reminded of the reality.

“What if I didn’t.” He suggests, just out of curiosity.

Erik looks troubled by his statement. “Your condition would deteriorate and I’d have to transfer you to a hospital for treatment. I know you don’t like doctors, though.”

He’s right. Ever since his surgery Charles had developed a fear of anything having to do with medical treatment.

“What if I threw something through this window and jumped out of it?” He challenges him. “What would you do then?”

A broad hand lands on his shoulder and turns him around. Somehow, the reflection in the glass didn’t do enough to fully translate the fear painted on Erik’s features. It was terrifyingly human.

“I’d call for help and go to ground level to look for your body. I’d _mourn_ you, Charles, I don’t know what’s gotten into you today…”

Charles works his jaw, sniffs. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him either. 

Erik studies him with cybernetic blue-grey eyes. They, unlike human eyeballs, could stay in one fixed place for an indefinite period of time. “Do you want to get back in bed?”

“Isn’t that not recommended for my mental health?” Charles scoffs, one corner of his mouth pulling up in a wry grimace. “Sleeping during the day?”

Erik shakes his head, rubs his thumb against Charles’ shoulder. “No. Not if it’s just once.”

The prospect of sliding back underneath his covers and sleeping the world away sounded deliciously tempting, and while he was asleep Charles didn’t think about drinking, or shooting up, or the accident, or killing himself. Even better, while he was asleep he was at peace.

He dips his head in defeat. “Okay. Bed.”

Erik wraps his arm around Charles’ back and guides him down the hall connecting his sitting room to his bedroom, closing its door behind them. He had already made the bed that morning after Charles had woken up, but shows no sign of annoyance when Charles collapses back into it and messes up all the sheets while he gets comfortable. 

He lays there, still in his day clothes, and wonders what the point of all of this was.

He was out of work - in this society, that meant you were a financial drain on the world.

He was ill - that was why he couldn’t work.

He was wealthy, yet did nothing with his money - it made him feel like a selfish hoarder.

There was a time, before Erik, before the accident and before the addictions, when Charles enjoyed being alive. When he and Raven still both lived together in a home closer to ground level, and they had friends they’d go out with and bars they’d frequent. They were thrill-seekers who thrived in the death trap human society had become, flirting with danger and choosing which laws they’d follow and which they’d break. But that was before.

This is after. And the after, where he’s a shut-in in his apartment and a burden on this android, the only friend he’s got, is not the future Charles wanted for himself.

At least he’s alive, his therapist would say. His therapist, who Charles can’t even visit in person because now going to ground level could quite possibly kill him very quickly.

Charles does not enjoy being alive. That’s not why he’s still here, because he’s thankful he’s got a ‘second chance’.

Erik slides into bed behind him. He’s warm, just like a real human. When Charles clings to him his flesh yields, just like a real human.

Lips land on the crown of his forehead. “You have miles to go before you sleep.” Erik whispers to him, a line from an old, old poem Charles had always loved.

He curls into Erik’s chest, like if they were close enough he could just fade into him and disappear. Charles wasn’t the right match for this world, not in the way it was now. He didn’t belong in this time, when blood and tears were washed away down rainy gutters right alongside obsolete computer chips and discarded wires. When smog turned the entire world yellow and you could barely see the moon.

He doesn’t enjoy being alive, but he’s still here, because he loves Erik. His caretaker robot, who’s been kinder to him than any living human.

“And promises...and promises to keep.” He murmurs into Erik’s breastbone. His eyes flutter closed against his skin. 

He will bear this life, this life he shouldn’t have, because he loves Erik, and he knows Erik loves him just as deeply as a human would. Maybe more so, if the soft hands curled around his shoulders and the small puffs of breath against his temple were any indication. 

Love. It’s all he’s got. At least it’s something to stay alive for.


	6. flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern au, no powers. they're exes but are still mutually pining.

The first thing Charles does when he meets Erik’s eyes from across the bar is hightail it out the back door.

His drink is left unfinished at his table, the door at the end of the hallway is left swinging in his wake, and Charles paces back and forth in the alleyway behind the building while he tries to get his breathing back in check.

He doesn’t think he can ever enter that bar again without panicking. Nobody told him that Erik was going to be there the same time he was, smiling and laughing at the counter with a woman on his arm. Someone should have told him.

It’s been almost a year and a half since they broke up, and still, Charles is out here freaking out over Erik like a teenager. It’s embarrassing, it’s stupid, and he should really know better.

He presses his back up against the alley’s brick wall and breathes deeply. In, out, in, out, in, out -

“...Charles?”

He jumps. The back door to the club is open, and Erik is leaning out of it, looking concerned. “I saw you run out. Are you alright?”

It was so kind of him to ask if _Charles_ was alright, when the last time they spoke it ended in a screaming match and with Charles kicking him out of his apartment building. Suddenly, he feels like the biggest asshole in the world - why on earth was Erik wasting his time on being nice to him when he obviously had better company?

He sniffs loudly, straightening himself up against the wall and running a hand over his unshaven jaw. “Yes, hi, I’m fine. Perfectly fine, I just…”

Excuse, come up with an excuse. _He can’t know you’re still pining,_ Charles thinks.

“...I had to take an urgent call. From work. Very important.” He sputters.

Erik silently holds up Charles’ phone. “You left it at your table.”

Charles lowers his head into his hands and slides down the brick wall until he’s sitting on his ass. “Oh, god.”

From behind his hands he hears the door swing closed, and for a moment he thinks that Erik’s left him until he hears someone else grunt as they sit down next to him. Peeling his face off of his palms, Charles looks at Erik through overgrown fringe that really needed a cut.

“This is so embarrassing, I’m so sorry.” He babbles, before Erik even says anything. “You should just go back inside, I’m sure your girlfriend is looking for you.”

Erik gives him a look that quickly morphs from confusion to surprise to amusement. “Were you watching me?”

Charles groans. “I was _surprised_ by your _presence,_ that’s all.” he swears, burying his face back into his hands. Erik chuckles, pats him on the back.

“I mean…” He hears him start. “I was watching you too. How do you think I noticed you left?”

Even though Erik can’t see his expression, Charles’ eyes narrow. Yeah, how did he know he had gone out the back?

He lifts his head and throws him a scrutinizing look. “You have a date with you. You shouldn’t _be_ watching me. I have an excuse, I’m still single.”

That was a fancy way of saying he didn’t think he could date anyone again after Erik. As far as old flames went, he was the brightest and hottest (literally) of them all.

“Magda’s not my date, Charles, she’s just a friend. I’ve known her since I was a teenager.”

Charles sounds maybe a little too hopeful when he says “Really?”

“Really. I think you’d like her, actually.”

Maybe he wasn’t hearing things right, or Erik really had just implied that he wanted Charles to join him and his friend back at the bar. This was strange for multiple reasons:

1\. Had he somehow forgotten how messy his and Charles’ breakup was?

2\. Was Erik suddenly a forgiving person after a lifetime of being...not that?

3\. Did Charles not actually embarrass himself out of a good night like he thought he did?

He has to make Erik clarify so that he doesn’t think himself back into a spiral. “What are you saying?”

His ex shoots him a bashful look, which is odd to see on a face like his. “I’m asking you if you’d like some company for the night.”

He wanted to. Oh, how Charles wanted to. But it was bad to come crawling back to an old partner so quickly, right?

...Well, it _had_ been more than a year. That could be considered an acceptable amount of time to sulk. _You are a weak, weak man,_ Charles told himself.

“You’re too forgiving.” He tells Erik weakly. 

In response, Erik guides him up off the ground and places his phone back into his hand. “No, I’m just too attached.”

Despite everything that gets a laugh out of him. “Same here, my friend. I swear -” He gestures with an air of finality. “- No arguing. I won’t mess up again.”

“I appreciate it, Charles.” Erik grins, and Charles almost melts after going for so long without having that smile facing him. “I won’t either.”

And then he opens the door back into the bar, back into the dim lighting and the smell of smoke and alcohol, and guides Charles counter-ways with a hand between his shoulders. “Now, you have to meet Magda. She’s heard a lot about you.”

“About me?”

“Of course. You’ve been on my mind ever since I left, she’s heard her fair share about my woes and troubles.”

Charles’ heart twists. “I don’t think this is much of a revelation, but you were on mine too. Every day.”

“You and I...” Erik murmurs, soft in the din of the crowds but still audible to Charles’ ear. “Just like magnets, the two of us.”

What a funny thing.


	7. formal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1700s au, charles and erik meet at a ball and are horny.

‘Twas a sunset evening in the north of England, and the esteemed Xavier family was holding a ball.

The perfume of roses and lilies hung sweet and heavy in the twilight air and drifted through the vast estate, and blooming flowers hung from every surface, decorated as if in Elysium. Flickering candles lit up the darker corners of the great halls and rooms, twinkling like tiny orange stars. People drifted from space to space, filling the manor with the soft hum of amused conversation and the quiet rustling of ladies’ gowns, gentlemens’ coats. 

And in the great ballroom, where from a high balustrade Lord and Lady Xavier watched their patrons dance to a Mozartian waltz performed by a chamber orchestra, men and women spun around in time with a 3/4s beat and, as if in tune with the music itself, passed from corner to corner, partner to partner, stepping gracefully to the tune. Their spectators watched from dainty tables set up outside the dance floor, sipping wine and gossiping with people they had never met before.

Like the aristocrats did with their galas in France, no luxury was spared in preparation. The mansion was so filled with light and color and glittering riches it could be compared to Buckingham palace - or even more lofty: Versailles. Sharon Xavier did so love her parties, and Kurt Xavier always gave her what she wanted.

The Xavier son, Charles, was within the thrall of dancers. He was trained in dance from a very young age, and now he received woman after woman to twirl around in his arms and charm with his wit and intelligence gained from his private tutoring.

He was a pretty and delicate young man - pale of skin and blue of eye, with dark chestnut hair that curled at the ends and pink lips that always tilted up in a smirk. He was not like the brutish youths that fought and squabbled over trivial matters. He was a scholar, a flirt, a hedonistic young Lord with too much wealth at his fingertips for him to do as he pleased with. The women danced with him to gain favor from his parents only, and perhaps to caress him, but Charles felt nothing from any of them.

On the other side of the room, smiling and nodding along with what some stranger was telling him about the war in America, was the son of another wealthy family. Edie and Jakob Lehnsherr, from cold Germany, brought their son Erik with them to the Xavier’s ball for a reason he couldn’t understand. They had no business with anyone in England, and often made a point to stay away from these frivolous endeavors. Why they traveled across the ocean to visit, Erik did not know.

He never much liked these parties, anyway. The clothing was stifling and the company was shallow. The Xavier mansion was beautiful, yes, but he much rather preferred to have a walk about in the gardens rather than entertain strangers he didn’t care about for hours on end. They wanted him to speak German to them, to call them beautiful in his native tongue, and Erik would insult them snidely in Yiddish instead. None of them knew the difference.

Erik was a hard worker and didn’t care for foolishness. The Lehnsherrs didn’t start _out_ rich, they accrued their wealth through years of labor and hard-fought connections with the right people. His least favorite part of it all, since they had officially moved up to the higher rungs of polite society, were events like these. His mother knew he didn’t like conversation at the best of times, and yet here he was, trying not to drop his wine glass and staring vacantly into the crowd of dancers.

There was one thing that Erik was interested in, however, and there was one person Charles was intrigued by among all others.

Every so often Charles would reach the outskirts of the floor and travel around its border, glancing at the audience, and he’d spot Erik among the crowds of people murmuring quietly to each other. Erik spotted him too, and watched him intently until he disappeared back into the fray.

_He has the most beautiful eyes,_ Charles thought. _And such an aristocratic face! Such intensity, such power in his gaze...why, I could write poetry about it!_

_He’s so graceful in movement,_ Erik thought. _And he’s beautiful, like a woman. Pale and delicate...but still confident like a man._

After a while, Erik politely excused himself from his conversation, and Charles politely excused himself from his dance. Both of their partners quickly moved onto other things - such was the nature of these hyper-social get togethers. They were not for making friends, rather socializing just for the experience of it. To show off one’s wealth, influence, and power in a way that did not seem boastful.

Erik and Charles, however, were not normal men who attended these parties, and they had different goals than most.

Charles made sure that Erik was looking at him as he slipped out of the south entrance to the ballroom, disappearing from the main event of the party like a ghost. Erik followed shortly after, weaving through crowds and paying no attention to anyone who tried to engage him in conversation.

They met in the gardens, just like Erik had hoped. He follows Charles out and down through meandering pathways outside, flowers brushing his sides and the top of his head as he ducked around them. Lit by candlelight as the sun slowly but surely disappeared below the horizon, the Xaviers’ garden looked like it was glowing. He had to admit - sometimes wealth could get you beautiful things. He had always wanted a big garden, ever since he was a small boy.

Charles stood under a trellis which was absolutely dripping with purple wisteria. He met Erik with a charming smile once he joined him underneath it, dipping at the waist in a bow. 

“I’m glad you followed me, sir. I saw you staring.”

Erik bowed to him in return, but his eyes never left Charles’ face, his amused expression. “You invited me. Don’t think I didn’t catch you staring as well.”

Charles laughs, and it’s a sound like chiming bells. “You’re more alluring than any young lady who has propositioned me tonight, sir - if I may be so bold. Charles Xavier.” He holds out his hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

It may have been too bold of him, in that moment, but Erik raised Charles’ hand to his lips to kiss it. “Erik Lehnsherr. Enchanted.”

From the way Charles’ face flushed pink, Erik knew he had made no mistake. The young lord grasped his hand after it was lowered, and moved closer to him. Their chests brushed, and Erik felt Charles’ breath on his neck. “Forgive my extended invitation, if I end up getting ahead of myself, but…” From Erik’s hand, Charles runs his palm up his arm until he was grasping his shoulder, gripping it tightly. “Would you be opposed to staying in my company for the remainder of the night?”

Erik raised an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth tugging up in a wry smile. “Would it be only your presence I’d be enjoying, if that should be the case?”

“Oh, no, my darling.” Charles purrs. He slides his hand over Erik’s cravat and tugs on it. “It would be much more than that.”

And then he tilts his head up to whisper into Erik’s ear, “Have you ever made love to a man as you would a woman before?” And Erik’s face goes red. “I can show you what it’s like. If you think I’m beautiful, you should see me in private.”

“We’re in private now.” Erik murmurs, tilting his head so that his nose brushed Charles’ cheek.

“Feeling brave?” Charles teases him. “You could fuck me, if you want to. Or if you’re an adventurous soul, I could fuck you. It’s truly divine, either way, making love to one of your same kind. I’m very educated on the matter.”

It was very obvious he was to Erik, that was for certain. With every word he spoke, heat kept rising in his body, until he truly could not take it anymore.

He tentatively set his hands on Charles’ waist. “Show me everything.” Erik said to him, voice low with desire. “Right here. I couldn’t resist your charms if I tried.”

Charles pecks his cheek, and hooks one finger under his cravat to pull it undone from his neck. Silk slides over silk like a waterfall, and the first cool breeze that hit’s Erik’s skin makes him shiver. “Of course, darling. For a man like you, I’d do anything.”

It’s the invitation that threatens to make Erik melt. He leans back against one of the pillars of the trellis, and lets Charles pin him there. Their eyes meet, illuminated by the garden’s glow. “Would you fuck me, Lord Xavier? Show me what it feels like?”

Charles’ gaze visibly hardens, his gaze shrinking into a pinpoint through which he can only see the heat high on Erik’s cheeks and his teeth biting his lip. 

“Oh, yes.” He sighs. “Yes, I will.”

Erik’s sharp, hungry grin is enough of an answer on its own. The two of them aren’t seen by anyone else for the rest of the night.


	8. companion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1950s au, charles and erik are lovers in secret. this got a little more poignant than i meant for it to be?

To anyone who knew either Charles Xavier or Erik Lehnsherr, either was the very model of a modern father. Charles had one teenaged son, and Erik two eight-year-old twins. They all went to the same school, played in the street with other youths during the summertime, had perfect manners and many talents.

Charles was a literature professor at the local college, and Erik headed a law firm. Charles was a charming British lad from across the pond, and Erik was the nice Jewish boy all the mothers wanted their daughters to marry.

Despite their rather taboo status as single fathers, Charles and Erik had extensive social networks and good reputations. Local women sighed over them, wondering if they were widowers, or divorcees, or (scandalously) had never been married.

Charles was on a quiz team at the local pub, and Erik took his boat out sailing into the bay every weekend. They were perfect citizens, well-liked and well-mannered and well-groomed and _well._

Their children were often seen in each-other’s company. Young Wanda and Pietro loved older David’s stories and the magic tricks he liked to practice, and the two of them could most commonly be found trailing behind him like ducklings. For being of such different ages, they got along remarkably well, almost like they were related to each other. Other parents in town envied how nicely the Xavier-Lehnsherr children behaved.

Charles and Erik were often seen together as well, many people noticed. When their children were together, they could always be found nearby. While the children were at school, they took walks around the neighborhood together. On some Friday nights, they could be spotted at the local pub, having a drink over talk about their jobs, the local news, and whatever it was that men liked to talk about.

Charles always laughed a little too loudly at Erik’s sarcastic jokes, and Erik always grinned a little too widely as he listened to Charles recount tales from his work. As far as friends went, the two of them were like peas in a pod. They could be brothers, people said. For two men, they were surprisingly close.

But they were friends, that’s all. They couldn’t be anything different. What else could they possibly be other than a pair of close companions?

If anyone saw Charles lean up and kiss the corner of Erik’s mouth while they were out in the evening, they didn’t tell anyone else about it. And if they saw Erik slide his hand around Charles’ waist and tug him close to his side, they didn’t tell anyone about that either.

No one ever saw what they were like in private together, of course. No one knew. 

There was more than discreet hand-holding and caressing when they were in the safety of one of their own homes, the children thoroughly distracted and the door thoroughly locked. In private, Charles and Erik loved each other like a husband and wife would, but no one ever saw it.

The children knew, of course. They saw their parents’ kiss-marked cheeks and loving glances at each other, they saw how their touches lingered and how hesitant they were to let go of each other when they stepped back out into the public world outside their homes. They just swore it all to secrecy, because they knew if anyone found out about their relationship, their reputations and social lives would forever be ruined.

It was a tiring existence.

Charles, often, thought about a time in the future when they wouldn’t have to hide. When two men or two women could kiss each other in front of strangers and wouldn’t get insulted for it. A future where, just maybe, they could get married. He had always been a dreamer, and he dreamed of a better life for himself, for Erik, for David, for their entire little family.

Erik didn’t like to hide, but he knew it was necessary. After the war, he had fought to create a stable life for himself and his children despite the pressures he faced being a Jew in America. He was hyper-aware of the antisemitism Americans possessed, and he made few friends because he was paranoid. If he was a little younger, a little less tired, a little angrier, he wouldn’t hide. But there were the children to think about, now. There was the good reputation he had made for himself and the people he _had_ made friends with. To hide such an integral part of himself was self-sacrifice, but if he didn’t there could be potentially disastrous consequences.

Charles helped him cope with it all. Ever since he had moved into town, Charles had been there, loyal and kind and trusting. He was who Erik confided all his troubles in, and he was who made him feel better about the stifled, angering life he lived.

One day, Charles sometimes said to him, things _will_ be different. The world will change for the better, and they would be able to love in peace.

Erik had known only rage for many years, and after that, fear. Peace was something new.

With Charles, and with their children, who would grow up to teach tolerance to the rest of their generation, Erik was finally able to let himself have hope.

No one knew about Charles and Erik. They thought they did, but they didn’t. They were not model citizens, and they were not common men. Between the two of them, there was hope, and fear, and there were many other things that no one would ever see.

Maybe in the future they would see. Maybe. And if they did, then Charles and Erik wouldn’t have to hide anymore.


	9. move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern au, charles and erik meet at a nightclub and are shameless horny flirts. might write a part two to this one.

After Charles had finally received his diploma from Oxford’s Chancellor, shaken all the important people’s hands, smiled for the cameras, taken a half-hour nap back at his apartment and gotten tackled by Raven when she subsequently broke in, he decided to do the respectable thing and go clubbing.

Raven tore up his closet while looking for something he could wear out. “If you’re gonna get laid, we need you to be in something that makes people want to fuck you.” She had said, bent over in piles of his clothes while Charles sat and watched her with a glass of wine, stupefied and starting his journey toward getting drunk early.

“What if I want to do the fucking?” He ponders, swirling his drink around. “How do I make people believe I’m a top?”

Raven pauses, turns around, and gives him a Look. “Just because you look…” She gestures to the entirety of him. “...Like that, doesn’t mean people are going to automatically assume you’re a petite little flower. It’s modern times, not the 1980s or whatever.” 

She goes back to rummaging, and a few seconds later throws a pair of pants at him. They’re leather - Charles has no memory of owning a pair of leather pants once in his life. “Try those on -” Raven says quickly, and then adds “- On my honor as a crazy bitch I’m going to make you look good if it kills me.”

The bluntness of her words makes Charles snort into his wine, and after coughing, he sets his glass down and feels the fabric of the pants with his hands. “Alright, alright, I trust you. Give me a minute.”

He goes into the bathroom to change, and soon emerges to face Raven’s scrutiny. She squints at him, twirls her finger in the air as a demand for him to turn around, and he does, eyebrows raised. These pants, paired with the beige sweater he’d been wearing during the day, looked a fright together, but it wasn’t going to be the final product (Raven would never allow it).

She nods. “Okay, they make your ass look _great._ Do you have, um…” Snapping her fingers in thought, she turns around to peer back into his closet at his collection of shoes. “Do you have any pairs of boots?”

“Like...with heels?” Charles says, incredulously.

“No, dumbass, just boots. Man boots. Ah-ha, yes you do!”

A pair of boots comes flying at Charles’ crotch, then, and he awkwardly blocks his masculinity with his hands while the boots clatter onto the floor. He picks them up, and is thankful he recognizes these ones - just a pair of black chelsea boots which did in fact have a substantial heel, at least by mens’ shoes standards. After he slips them on his feet, he has to admit they look good with the pants. Raven’s talents never ceased to amaze him.

It was probably because she was a shapeshifter, Charles thought. Duh. She knew how someone’s appearance could influence their life better than probably anyone on earth.

“Okay, what’s next? I’m not wearing a sweater to the club.” Charles tells her, after taking another sip of his wine. The bottle was sitting on his desk next to it, half-empty.

Luckily, the rest of his outfit seemed to have come together quickly. More things get thrown in his general direction: one of his good white button-downs (this one actually had black buttons), and a dark jacket that Alex had given him for his birthday last year that Charles, at the time, had thought was too edgy for him. After he’s got the whole fit on, and Raven spins him around to look in the mirror, he has to admit that he doesn’t look half bad.

He’s out of his comfort zone, for sure, but it’s not half bad. Charles sweeps a hand through his hair to push it away from his face, and grins at his reflection. “Nice job, Raven. I look absolutely nothing like myself.”

She leans on him, head on his shoulder. “Yeah, you look like a stud. Oh - and one more thing!”

Raven picks up her bag from Charles’ office chair and digs around in it with just as much fervor as she dug through his closet, eventually pulling out a handful of delicate silver chains with various pendants hanging from them. Charles watches her struggle in untangling them for a good five minutes, amused.

“Are those supposed to be for me?” He asks her, once she’s finally done.

“Yeah! Unbutton your shirt a bit.”

Charles does as he’s told, and with deft fingers Raven secures two of the necklaces around his neck. They’re surprisingly cold when they hit his bare skin, and he’s not used to the feeling of wearing jewelry, but - “Trust me.” Raven reassures him, patting his shoulder. “It makes a world of a difference. Makes you seem like you know what you’re doing.”

Charles liked to consider himself a bit of a social guru, considering his handy mutation that let him in on all social cues and signs and cultures that existed in peoples’ minds, but he didn’t know about this. “How?”

“Because a guy who wears necklaces is confident and takes care of his appearance. _Trust_ me, Charles, do you not trust me or something?”

“No, no, I do! I’m just…”

“An old fart?”

“Yes, but - you know. This isn’t usually my gig.”

Raven’s skin ripples in a wave of scales, and suddenly she’s in her blonde-haired disguise, dressed in fishnets and a short skirt and a leather jacket. “Call it a graduation present, dude. It’ll be fun, I swear. Let’s get going already!”

By the time he and Raven are squeezed into the back of a cab together, he’s forgotten all of his anxieties. He’s pleasantly buzzed on wine, looking good, and feeling good. He’s got a PhD in genetics and he’s ready to party, now that all of his hard work for the moment is done. The minds of Oxford’s youth buzz around him with happiness and Charles is _excited._

~

One thing Oxford (and England in general) is not lacking in is clubs and bars. Just a few minutes’ drive from Charles and Raven’s apartment building is a busy street full of people and lit up like daytime. They hit the sidewalk with an enthusiastic zeal, dipping into building after building to order a drink, dance, and move on to the next.

Raven is capable of making friends in all of the first five seconds after she meets someone, and an hour or so after they started she’s got two girls’ numbers and one guys’. Charles has a grand total of nothing yet, but he didn’t come out here with the intent of finding true love, so he’s content to just drink and dance and yell-talk to Raven over pounding music.

There’s a huge renovated discotheque from the 70s that sits one block off of the main Party Street, and Charles and Raven slip inside after hearing about it from some strangers at a pub. It’s the real deal, that much is obvious - there’s a disco ball and everything. Their skin changes under the lights from purple to green to red to orange and Charles takes a couple photos of Raven with flowers from the light projector swirling up her cheeks that she immediately sends to everyone they know.

And of course, there’s more drinks. The two of them shuffle their way through crowds of undulating, gyrating partygoers and collapse onto the bar, wherein Raven gets a mojito and Charles gets a whiskey sour. Charles surfs the crowds' minds, looking for anyone interesting, and at the same time Raven surveys everyone with keen eyes. 

He’d never admit it, but in these kinds of situations Charles looks for mutants first before expanding his reach to everyone. Telepaths had especially bad reputations among baselines, and after an unfortunate ex tried to beat him up because he read his thoughts one too many times, Charles took priority of meeting new people who’d understand his state of being better over any random human with an interesting-feeling mind.

Lucky for him, he finds a couple mutants in the crowd, and even luckier, he finds one who draws his attention _instantly._

Raven must be able to tell from the way his posture straightens up and his eyes lock onto someone in the distance. “Did you hit gold?” She asks him, shouting over the music.

“Very possibly.” Charles says back. He downs the remainder of his drink and places it firmly on the bar, holding out his fist to his sister. She bumps it with her own. “Wish me luck?”

“You won’t need it, but good luck.” Raven smirks at him, and with a psych-himself-up grin Charles sets off through the crowd to find this mutant with the most interesting mind he’s seen all night. Its inner layers were locked up like steel, hidden from any prying psionics, but just _oozed_ confidence, sexuality, power, and a lot of other arousing words that made Charles’ face heat up. He could only imagine what the face attached to that brain looked like - he _had_ to know.

He finds his mutant easily enough - he’s tall, and easy to spot because of that. Check one box off of the ‘Is this man Charles’ type’ list.

He also checks literally every other box. 

The mutant is built athletically, with long legs, a broad chest, and a _sinfully_ tiny waist. He’s colored rainbow by the flashing lights of the discotheque, but his palette doesn’t matter when his body is that good. A beautiful mind and a beautiful build make for Charles’ ideal man, so far. He sidles up to him on the dance floor, tapping him on the hip to get his attention.

The mutant whirls around to face him, startled, but his thoughts start to turn dirty when he catches a good look at Charles’ face - another good sign. He’s got these beautiful Roman features that make him look like he was carved out of marble, and when he smiles, Charles melts: the mutant’s got the most terrifying grin he’s ever seen, but it’s _hot._ He’s like a predator animal, lean and deadly and dangerous. He even moves like one.

“I couldn’t help but notice,” Charles says to him over the din. “That you’ve got the most _groovy_ mutation in this entire building. Metallokinesis, I’ve never seen that before. I’m Charles.”

The man’s very particular about how he presents himself to humans, Charles sees. He’s an activist, and he’s almost violently confident about his abilities. He’s put at ease by Charles’ words, which mark him both as a fellow mutant and brave.

“Erik,” He says back at Charles. “You a telepath?”

He nods, still swaying to the music. “Yep. I was looking around for other mutants, and you’re the best of the lot.”

Erik laughs, throwing his head back to whip his hair out of his face. It’s infuriatingly sexy, and Charles wants to get his teeth on his neck and _bite down._ “You’re cute, Charles. I like you.”

“And you’re fucking gorgeous.” Charles replies, and while he’s riding the high of Erik’s grin he reaches out and slides his hand over his hip, hoping he’ll let it stay there.

Erik grasps his wrist and pulls him in until their chests bump together. A resounding yes, obviously - Charles feels like he could be in heaven. 

With his other hand he palms Erik’s chest, pressing down over his thrumming heartbeat. “Sorry if I’m being too forward,” He gasps. “But what do you think about maybe getting out of here for a while?”

Erik spins them around in the crowd, rolling his hips hard enough that Charles can _feel_ his cock against his thigh through the material of his pants. Biting back the urge to groan, Charles grinds against him in return. His face is growing quickly flushed, and from what he can feel in Erik’s mind he’s getting heated too. 

“If you don’t mind coming back to a hotel room, I’m all yours.” Erik says, running his hands up Charles’ sides. He shivers.

“How long are you in town for?”

“As long as I want to be. You want to see me again?”

Charles moves the hand on Erik’s chest up to the back of his neck, fingers brushing the soft hairs at the base of his skull. “Baby, I want to see you every day for the rest of my life.”

Erik smiles that apex predator grin again. “Let’s blow this place.”

_Jackpot,_ Charles sends to Raven. _You okay going home alone?_

All he gets in return is a wave of jealousy and a surprised _You lucky bastard! I’ve gotta find someone to go home with._

Deeming that as a confirmation that Raven would be fine on her own, Charles leans up and plants his lips clumsily on the side of Erik’s face. “Lead the way.”

Grasping his hand and pulling him through the crowd like they were horny teenagers at prom, Erik tugs him out of the discotheque and over to a motorcycle parked a couple blocks away. On the ride to his hotel, Charles holds on so tight to Erik that he’ll probably have marks on his torso from his fingernails digging in the next day...but he’s planning to make a lot more marks on Erik than just those. 

This perfect man, this guy that checks off _all_ of his boxes, is his for (at least) one whole night. Charles has got plans.

 _Raven was right. This is,_ he thinks, later, when he’s sucking hickeys into Erik’s neck and driving his cock deep into his ass - _Probably the best graduation present ever._


	10. silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern au, erik gets a tattoo from tattoo artist charles. can you tell i like writing first meetings?

The guy who comes into the studio is definitely not the kind of tattoo artist Erik was expecting to have for this session.

He was smaller, slight, and wearing a pastel purple sweater over khakis, of all things - if you stood him in a line next to all the other artists at the shop, he’d stick out like a sore thumb.

Erik couldn’t deny one thing, though, and it was that the artist was pretty. Dark hair fell just past his chin and made his eyes seem all that much bluer, and he was biting his lip while he scrolled through his phone, looking for music to play over his studio’s mini stereo.

Once the artist had found something suitable (Fleetwood Mac), he finally turned to Erik, sitting on the padded table. “Hi! I’m Charles, I’ll be doing your bicep piece today.”

He stuck out his hand, and Erik shook it. His grip was harder than expected, and his hands were broad, strong. His eyebrows quirked up - not what he thought he’d be getting, so far. “Erik.”

“Fantastic. I have the stencil all ready here, so:” Charles points a finger square at Erik’s chest, then jerks his thumb back. “if I can get you to roll up your sleeve or take your shirt off or whatever’s most comfortable to you, I can prep your arm and we can get going.” 

Erik takes off his leather jacket, and tries to roll his shirtsleeve up, but it ends up being too tight so he just takes the whole thing off. With his top half exposed he leans back on the table, watching Charles as he sanitizes his supplies and cuts out the stencil for the tattoo.

He keeps watching as Charles takes his sweater off, draping it over his stool. He’s wearing a button-down underneath, and when he pushes his sleeves up to his elbows Erik almost swears in surprise.

Charles’ arms are absolutely covered in ink.

There’s a beautiful sleeve tattoo of a wolf slinking through a moonlit forest on Charles’ right arm, crawling all the way up to his knuckles, and on his other there’s just too many individual tattoos to count. Erik can see words, symbols, and catches a glimpse of what appears to be a double helix on the inside of his wrist. There’s a blackout band around his forearm, close to his elbow, and the roman letter X is marked underneath it.

Even more startling than all the ink on Charles’ skin is that his shoulders are surprisingly broad, his arms surprisingly muscular. That sweater hid a lot, it seemed, and Erik finds himself swearing off judging others by their initial appearances from now on. If he thought Charles was cute before, now he was just drop-dead sexy. He wants to feel his way up those arms, closely examine the art on his skin, get all the stories behind each and every tattoo.

The snapping of a latex glove snaps Erik out of his own thoughts - Charles shoots him a smile as he ties a black apron around his waist, that cinches him in in a way that should not be as arousing as it is. Erik smiles back, unconfidently.

Charles seems to catch it - “Nervous? I can see you have other tattoos, this won’t hurt as bad as that one on your collarbone.”

Erik shakes his head, after remembering that he did in fact have a tattoo there. “Oh - no, no, I’m just...lost in thought, I guess. I’m fine.”

“It’s nicely done.”

“What?”

“Your collar piece.” Charles repeats. _“Aut viam invenium aut faciam tibi._ I’ll either find a way or make one, right?”

“Right.” Erik replies, more or less in awe. “It’s just a saying I’ve always liked.”

Charles picks up the stencil, motioning for Erik to lay fully back, and sits next to him to get better access to his arm. “On the inside of the bicep…” He murmurs to himself, using gentle yet firm hands to turn Erik’s arm to the right angle so he can place the stencil in the correct place. Erik watches his forearms flex as he presses down on it, how his ink ripples along with his muscles.

After a minute, Charles peels the stencil off, and the guidelines for the tattoo are marked in stark blue ink on Erik’s arm. “That look good?” He asks him, turning around to get his tattoo gun and ink.

Erik glances at it: “Yeah, it’s good.” 

“You like quotes, huh? Ever think of just writing them down?” Charles asks him with a laugh as he slides his supplies on their little tray over next to his stool.

That gets a surprised laugh out of him. “These are more permanent than sticky notes. I like having reminders on my body.”

“Fair enough.” Charles turns on the tattoo gun, dipping it in black ink. “‘All are from dust and all turn to dust again.’ That’s a good one.”

“It’s from the Torah.” Erik says absently, turning his head to watch as Charles places his hand on his arm to stable it.

He hums - “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Then without further ado…” Charles trails off, touching the needle to Erik’s skin to start on the first letter of the tattoo. 

Erik’s got to hand it to him: the man works quick, but without sacrificing quality. It doesn’t matter that quotes are relatively easy to tattoo, especially when they’re all in one color, but the movements of Charles’ wrist are almost graceful. He knows when to pick the gun up when Erik’s arm involuntarily twitches, and he keeps a stable hold on it for the entire time he’s bent over and filling in the stencil. 

A couple times, his hair flops in front of his face, and he quickly pushes it back, revealing the pale column of his neck in full. Erik tries his damndest to keep his eyes off of it, and Charles in general, but ultimately fails.

The focus and clarity in Charles’ eyes as he works is hypnotizing. He’s got this look on his face that’s half-irritated, half-curious, and as strange as it is Erik finds it charming as all hell. The quirk of Charles’ eyebrows seems to be a constant feature on his face, like he’s eternally searching for the answer to some unknown question.

Erik wants to lean in and kiss him. He resists the urge with much difficulty (his mother raised him better than that).

He resists it, and he resists it, until Charles leans back from his arm and surveys his work with an air of pride. “I think we’re all done here,” He says, and reaches back for an alcohol wipe to clean the tattoo with. Erik sits through the stinging pain of alcohol over freshly wounded skin and throws Charles a reassuring grin when he apologizes for it.

After his arm is lotioned and cleaned and Charles is wrapping it with cling film, Erik is feeling a little brave (perhaps from the endorphins rushing through his veins to counteract the pain of the needle). “Listen,” He starts, and Charles’ eyes flick up to him. “I know this might be horridly forward of me, considering we’re strangers, but...do you think I could see you again sometime? You’re just…”

Charles finishes wrapping his arm and sits back on his stool, smirking at him. “You know a lot of my clients ask me that, right?”

Embarrassment quickly floods Erik’s brain. “Right, yeah, of course. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” He stammers, pulling his shirt back on as carefully as possible.

Cool hands land on the small of his back, tugging the hem of his shirt down the rest of the way. “I’m not done yet,” Erik hears Charles say. “Yes, a lot of my clients ask me that, but you’re the only one hot enough to get me to actually give it to them.”

Erik freezes with one arm in his jacket. “...Really?”

“Really.”

He laughs disbelievingly. “I guess you must also like quotes, huh.” He asks Charles, who has taken his gloves off.

“I do! I minored in literature in school, if you can believe it.”

Erik thinks back to that sweatered schoolboy look. “I think I can, actually.”

“Hold on a second -” Charles says, swiveling around on his stool to jot his number down on a scrap of paper. While he writes, he holds his hair back on his neck with one hand, and Erik sees a surprising glimmer of silver behind his ear.

It’s a surface piercing. Charles has a surface piercing on the back of his neck.

In an effort to keep himself from drooling, Erik stands from the table and shakes out his arm, wincing. Anything not to think about what other piercings Charles might have.

When Charles gives him the paper, Erik tucks it into his jacket. “I’ll text you.” He tells him, and Charles smiles wide.

“Looking forward to it, Erik. Thanks for coming in.” 

“Thank _you.”_ He answers, in what is likely the most cliche way anyone could respond to something like that. Charles doesn’t seem to find it that dumb, though, because he walks Erik to the entrance of the shop with the lightest touch on his back. Nonetheless, the heat of his hand feels like fire.

On the drive back to his home, Erik’s already coming up with other tattoos he can get, other piercings he can try out, and what he’ll say in his first message to Charles. How one person could suddenly introduce so much planning and so many possibilities into his life, he doesn’t know, but he’s pretty sure it just got a whole hell of a lot more exciting.

Later, when Erik’s arm is aching and he can’t sleep on his right side because of it, he isn’t as annoyed as he would be otherwise. There were better things in his future that he much preferred to think about.


	11. prepared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> low fantasy/medieval au, more omegaverse.

The woods were dark and snow-filled when Charles and Erik found themselves journeying through them. Separated from their traveling party by a sudden blizzard, they ended up in the middle of nowhere with clouds blocking the stars they could’ve used to find their way.

Erik was a natural-born tracker, and could find a path in the densest of forests, but such a thick snow cover and foggy sky made it almost impossible for him to tell where he and Charles were. 

Charles was, on the other hand, not much of a help at all - particularly because he was beside himself with worry, muttering under his breath about how he shouldn’t have let Erik convince him to make the journey on horse, shouldn’t have set out for the southern coast at all, should’ve stayed home where it was safe and warm and secure. Damn Erik’s spirit of adventure, it wasn’t even right for him to be traveling in his condition.

Back at home, before they left, it had already taken a lot to convince Charles that it would be a good idea to go south. He was a big believer in cave-alpha instincts (which annoyed Erik to no end), and argued with him that even if it was nicer and warmer down by the coast, and would be a better place for their fourth child to be born, that the risk of traveling in winter was too much. Everything was about protecting the pregnant omega, making sure no harm came to them, treating them like a fragile, decorative thing.

Needless to say, Erik was not that kind of omega, and he hated traditional alpha ideals. 

He ended up dragging Charles onto his horse and pulling a number of servants and knights along with them to cross the country with, and Charles couldn’t say a word about it because Erik, who was a bastard, was abusing his ‘I’m carrying _your_ child so you have to do what I say’ privileges.

This is how they were able to be easily severed from the rest of their group when the storm came. No one was hurt, but the two of them were on their own and with no idea of which way they were facing - Erik couldn’t tell which way was south anymore.

After a brief argument (like usual), Erik _did_ find a good indicator of the direction they should head off in by way of dying moss on the north face of a dead tree, and they started riding.

Charles was not used to being lost. Erik, who was not born in a kingdom but rather a nomadic tribe, had plenty of experience making his own paths, and so was not perturbed in the slightest. 

“The old peoples used to travel completely by horse,” He explained to Charles, who pretended not to listen and tugged the fur collar of his cloak further up his face. “And when the time came for omegas to give birth, they would get off of their horse, have their babies, and then continue on their way.”

He meant to make Charles feel better, telling him this, but everything he did just seemed to make the alpha get more anxious. “It doesn’t matter what the old peoples used to do,” Charles insisted. “Because their mortality rates were _extraordinarily_ high! Do you know how many omegas used to die in childbirth before common apothecaries were created?”

Erik waved his hand at him dismissively, holding onto the reins of his horse with the other. “We don’t have to worry about that unless I somehow go into labor - which I won’t.”

Charles scoffs. “And how, pray tell, do you know that? You’re not a physician.”

“I challenge any alpha physician to best me on matters of pregnancy when I’m an omega who has birthed three healthy children with minimal help already. I can feel it, Charles, I won’t go into labor this day.” 

“Pietro, Wanda, and Lorna were not _born_ in a _forest!”_ Charles exclaimed. “We’re not prepared! Good god, you could die out here if you go into labor!”

“And I _told_ you I won’t, Charles. If I did, it would be _exciting,_ like an adventure, to experience childbirth like our ancestors did. Do you ever listen to anything I say?” Erik yanks on the reins so his horse would slow down and stop putting pressure on his hips, which were starting to ache from a combination of being in the saddle for too long and having an unborn baby pressing down on them. 

“I _do,”_ Charles sighs. “But it’s my responsibility to ensure that neither you nor the baby get hurt while we’re out here! I trust you, Erik, you know I do, but I can’t help but worry.”

“Well, stop worrying.” Erik rolls his eyes, shifting back in his saddle. “We’ll join up with the others eventually, and then everything will be fi -”

He stops, yanking on his reins so hard that his horse stops short. Charles looks back from a few paces ahead to see Erik bow over the back of his steed, jaw set and eyes hardened, staring resolutely at his saddle. After a second, he straightens up, breathing heavily with a hand on his midsection.

“Are you alright?” Charles asks him meekly, voice wavering.

Erik, whose face is growing flushed, avoids his alpha’s eyes. “Don’t scold me.”

Charles shakes his head minutely. “I’m not going to - what happened, are you alright?” 

“I think I just felt a contraction.”

In that moment, there are many expletives Charles has the urge to yell at Erik, including _You can feel it my ass, no one’s omniscient enough to know when they’re going to go into labor, no townsfolk nor king nor anyone._ Instead, he takes a deep breath in through his nose, and maneuvers the reins of Erik’s horse out of his hands so he can lead them both. “I’m not going to scold you.” He says, in what he hopes is a calm tone.

It must not be, because Erik looks at him anxiously and plants his hands on his saddle horn to stable himself. “Even when you were right?”

“How about this,” Charles intones. “I scold you after you have the baby. That way we can worry about the important things while they’re worth worrying about, and you can receive your karma for being overconfident later.”

Erik huffs a laugh, nodding his assent. “I suppose the party will have to wait a while for us. We need to find shelter.”

“And I will try my damndest to make sure no one dies today.” Charles decides.

“Good deal.” Erik agrees. He’s soon struck by another pain and goes quiet, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, and Charles leads them on through the woods. The rest of their group _would_ just have to wait, unfortunately, but none of them were as important to Charles as his and Erik’s newest-born offspring. 

By the time the sun rises in the early hours of the next morning, Nina Xavier-Lehnsherr is born, and Charles gently scolds both her and Erik for making him worry so much. Erik only laughs, and then kisses him tiredly. 

Nina babbles and reaches for their clothes and stares at the birds high up in the trees, alive and already with a taste for adventure.

**Author's Note:**

> please feel free to comment ideas for ficlets, like a word, concept, phrase, alternate universe idea, anything! i really like writing these things so i'm excited to get the ball rolling :)
> 
> ALSO please tell me what you think in general. comments and kudos keep me writing!


End file.
